Saturday 29th November
Sorry for the huge gap ..............because I was still not settled anywhere it was difficult to get to the internet but..............
Finally

A rather important day in my life in Rwanda. I finally moved into my own house and it is such a relief that I feel unable to describe it – I have been living out of my suitcase for 3 months almost. I had reached the point where I could not be bothered to do anything because it was just too much trouble because I did not know where anything was. Some stuff was in Giterama, some was in Shyogwe where poor Cerys had to put up with it till she left and some was in a small cramped room I was staying in at the Bishop’s House and everything was piled up all over the place so it was impossible to find anything. It has been a long time to live in that kind of jumble. This is the reason I am so hopelessly out of date with my blog.
Anyway I am now in my house and it is lovely. It is in a small community out in the country – I have never lived out in the countryside before but I like it here, and feel very at home. It is very small but it is like a cosy little cottage – Rwandan style of course. The floors are made of concrete and the doors and windows are small and made of metal. But I have my furniture around and my things on the bookshelves and it feels good.
I have electricity but no running water- we have jerry cans to flush the toilet and our domestique brings us a bucket of very hot water each morning for a shower (ie to throw over my head) I have an inside toilet and shower so at least i don’t have to go outside if i need the loo in the middle of the night. There was water but its not working at the moment and no one seems to know why. I have stayed with a couple of volunteers who only have squat toilets in the back yard so this is luxurious. But its a long walk to fetch the water. Samuel carries two Gerry cans about half an hour and they are so heavy that I can only just carry them a couple of yards! Immaculae carries it back on her head in a bucket!
I spent all day cleaning and rearranging the furniture and it just feels wonderful to be in my own space. I have had to live in motels or with other people for the last three months so it is just great to sit and watch DVDs until midnight because I can and I do not have to worry about disturbing anyone. I put up new cheery curtains that Bearta gave me and I am quite settled.
Sunday 30th November
I have reorganised the breakfast arrangements so that Michael can have his breakfast on his own. I prefer not to hurry in the morning and so I get up and have breakfast wearing the big fluffy Marks and Spencers dressing gown that Bill (my brother) and Christina sent me. They asked me if there was anything i wanted and I said please can you send a towelling robe. It can be quite cold after you have had a cold shower or bucket of water over your head in the morning! It took six weeks but this gorgeous big pink fluffy dressing gown arrived in the post and boy was it worth it. Thank you Bill and Chris.
Our domestique is called Immaculae and she is great – we pay her £20 a month I am afraid and I know it sounds scandalous but we only get paid £150 so in comparison its a good wage for her. It helps her to support her family and she is a treasure. She is here seven days a week and cooks and cleans and washes our clothes.
She only speaks Kinyarwanda though which is amusing I somehow managed to communicate that we only wanted soup and boiled eggs for supper the other night. She cooks exactly the same meals every day almost. Its good and it saves us going to the market and having to haggle – there is no way I would buy meat here anyway – but it is also very repetitive and also very carbohydrate based. We usually get two carbs at least – probably chips and rice or potatoes and pasta and one square inch cube of meat which is as tough as old boots and gets stuck in your teeth. We have managed, by a combination of very basic Kinyarwanda and some hilarious sign language to communicate that we only need one carbohydrate at a meal. Well I think we have at least – I still don’t know what I am going to get today. (Today is Monday as I am writing this – Michael has gone out with Bruce and I have been catching up ) But she is very attentive to our needs and very thoughtful. It seems weird having someone to do the work but it is easy to get used to!!!!!
Yesterday I got a phone call from Pete the cheery Belgian eye doctor who works at the hospital nearby. He invited us over for cake so we grabbed a push bike taxi down to the main road and stopped to pick up Bruce and Tom and went over to his place. By how the other half live – it almost looked like a normal house – but even he had no water and the tank had to be filled by jerry can!!! The cake was delicious but his domestique had been well trained by a Belgian and knew how to bake. Had a nice stroll in the countryside with the usual entourage of children following us. They don’t see a muzungu for years and then five come along at once. NO wonder we were a novelty.

What I have been doing since I last wrote in my blog – back to the beginning of November
The beginning of November was ICT 2 and we all met back at Armani. Interesting since I was not actually in my house or working still at that point.
The time that has gone since September has been out of my control in terms of actual work but I have gained a lot of experience of the country and the way things work as well as gathering information and support from other volunteers and I look at this as useful experience and inside knowledge so that I can get in with both feet in January. Michael and I work well together as a team – he lets me come up with my ideas but then makes them workable in a down to earth way. We have discussed how we will work in January and have several ideas of things we want to achieve when we start again.
I also decided I might as well make the most of living in Rwanda by visiting some areas I had not yet visited and catching up with people I had not seen since ICT1. Last weekend I went across to see Sonya in the east near the border with Tanzania. It is different immediately you leave Kigali. The hills are smaller and rounder and the vallies are wider. But there is still the green patchwork of cultivation everywhere the eye can see. It also seemed a little less populated both in terms of houses and people you could see.
Nyamagati where Sonya lives is a small town on a broader flatter plain. It has a good friendly feel to it and a relaxed atmosphere though much drier and dustier too. It also felt much more typically African somehow and especially when the stars came out while we were sitting on her verandah drinking Mutzig. How can you describe the African night sky ? Its impossible. Its like twinkly white freckles on pitch black backround there are so many. And constellations you see in the northern hemisphere are upside down. Orion’s belt is the opposite so he is standing on his head.
Sonya seems very well adjusted and settled into life in Rwanda. She shocked the whole town apparently by taking the car keys and driving the car to take some stuff that needed moving. A white woman driving a car was enough to keep the town talking all week. She has no running water a squate toilet and an outside room for a bucket of cold water for a shower or electricity and yet she looks very at home and she was a wonderful hostess. It was great to see her as we had not caught up since ICT1.
The next day we headed back to Kigali because we had been invited to tapas for Paula’s birthday. The beer was frightfully expensive 1700 RWF “It’s a sin” Joe kept saying in this wonderful Irish accent. He comes from the Arran Isles off the west coast of Ireland and has a wickedly dry sense of humour. We all finished off by nightclubbing at One Love until 3.30 am.
The next morning (not bright and early!) we meet Els and hear she was mugged on the way to her hotel and had her purse and phone stolen at 4.am.. She was very unlucky as generally Rwanda does feel very safe most of the time. It sounded like an opportunist as he was walking the other way and turned round when he saw her and she was nearly at the hotel when it happened although it was late. He had pushed her to the ground and tried to kick her before her screams alerted the guard at the hotel and she was very shaken understandably.
Later we caught the bus to head for Els place in Nyamata and it is very different – flat and hot with a bright blue sky. I stayed there for the night and then helped with her training before heading back to Giterama in the evening.

I check my wallet and I have spent £35 since setting off last Friday and its Monday night. Not bad considering where I have been and what I have done.

And also..........finally did some work
Michael and I finally ran some training. We had met with Stephanie the head teacher from the local primary school. A petite lady but formidable who wears the most wonderful African fabrics in all sorts of colours and creations. When you speak to her she seems to be analysing your every word and woe betide you if you say the wrong thing.
As it turns out she is really pleased with the two days training we offer. The teachers in her school have suddenly been told that they will teach maths in English from January 2009. Does this sound familiar to any teachers out there in England.? The problem is that these teachers have mainly done their schooling in French and speak little English so to suddenly have to teach in a language they don’t speak is an impossible task. It makes the changes in the English education system look sedate.
Anyway we took their problems on board and tried to address them by preparing rice sack resources in maths. We make them by writing on rice sacks with marker pens and although they are very basic it provides a resource which they can put up in their classrooms to provide them and their pupils with the English vocabulary needed in maths. They were thrilled to bits with the training and resources and realised that it would give them a good head start in January.
As for me I was in my element. Doing the Mrs Payne clock and all the other things I like doing to help children understand maths. I was buzzing! Some work finally after all this time – it helped give me a sense of purpose.
So I have done 2 days real work since I got here in theory – but in practise I have done a whole lot more. I have really enjoyed the whole experience and I feel very at home here. I am speaking more and more Kinyarwanda each day and that really helps. I just try things out all the time and most of it is wrong but bit by bit it starts to come right. I am sure i will never be able to say a whole sentence but I have some basic communication now and at least I have fun trying. It makes me feel more a part of Rwanda if I can at least say something in the language.
MY Little house
I am very happy and settled in my house, which I share with an assortment of creatures. There is a gecko which lives behind the bookcase and there was one on my bedroom wall as I got into bed the other night. I told him he could stay there if he ate the mosquitos I could hear whining around. I always sleep under my mosquito net but they make a very irritating noise. There are several splatted against the walls already! There are some huge bees that look like giant ants and one very intimidating one which makes a noise like a football rattle as it flies.
We also share the roof space with something noisy, probably mice or rats. The kitchen is outside and there is food in there so rodents are an inevitable part of life here. Michael hates them and has bought some very vicious looking traps but so far we haven’t caught anything. Its like mouse Olympics when they get going at night.
The bird life in Rwanda is a twitcher’s dream! Just in our garden we have tiny blue birds and bright red ones as tiny as a small child’s fist who visit regularly to feed on the red flowers. But there are many other different coloured visitors too many to mention. It was funny too to see the swallows return at the beginning of October. They may be the same ones I pointed out to the children at Windmill Hill in the playground last May but I doubt it! It is odd to think they have been all the way to England and I am now here to see their return journey. There are plenty of insects around here for them to feed on thats for sure. There are many kites and sometimes eagles and the national bird the ibis goes honking overhead throughout the day, Its an ugly old creature with a long pointed bill and a very distinctive cry. I got the binoculars out to look the other day and Samuel the domestique from the bible school was utterly fascinated – probably never seen anything like them before – he was playing with them for about an hour.
Have been buying presents in Butare and Kigali and am ready to pack now. I was on a bus in Kigali yesterday and the door dropped off just as we pulled away from picking someone up! I was trying so hard not to laugh but everyone else just smiled a knowing smile and we all waited patiently while the driver and the conductor put it back on again! You never know what to expect next.
So not much more to add now. It seems very odd to be coming home at Christmas. Today is the 1st December and I have avoided all the tacky buildup to Christmas and the cold weather. Its sunny here at the moment but it is going to rain. And its pleasantly warm like a nice September day. It has only been hot enough to sunbathe once while I have been here but its just pleasantly warm during the day, though it does get cold at night and you do need a jumper or a cardigan on. But generally it is sunny and it doesn’t feel like December at all – its quite disconcerting really!
But I am looking forward to coming home and especially to seeing all my family and friends. It seems a bit wrong because I have done so little work (but I know that is not my fault) and a bit soon really. But there is no work to do here while the schools are shut so I would rather be at home with my family and friends. I have plenty of time to travel round Rwanda when I come back.Have made a good start but have saved some of the more touristy things for another time.
Most of all I can honestly say that in spite of the fiasco at the beginning I have really enjoyed being here. I have sorted out the initial problems and I am now happy, relaxed and settled where I am. It may be odd, but I did not really feel settled until I got in my own place, but now that I am in I feel very at home both in Shyogwe and in Rwanda. My Kinyarwanda is not fantastic but just being able to talk to people a little makes me feel part of the place I live in too. It is funny to look back to my arrival at the beginning of September and think how quickly it is possible to adapt to new people, new faces, new food, new culture, new transport, new scenery etc etc and how quickly this just feels like how life is. It will be strange to be home........but good too.